A party flip-flop on trade?

Matthew Yglesias responds to my Wisconsin post with an intriguing hypothesis: NAFTA has become unpopular among Republicans, while Democrats like it fine. It gets -5 from white evangelicals, -6 from rural whites, -4 in exurban counties, -5 among white male seniors, and a whopping -17 among white non-college married men. And that’s NAFTA among Republican ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Matthew Yglesias responds to my Wisconsin post with an intriguing hypothesis:

Matthew Yglesias responds to my Wisconsin post with an intriguing hypothesis:

NAFTA has become unpopular among Republicans, while Democrats like it fine. It gets -5 from white evangelicals, -6 from rural whites, -4 in exurban counties, -5 among white male seniors, and a whopping -17 among white non-college married men. And that’s NAFTA among Republican loyalists. The only GOP-voting groups who like NAFTA are residents of the Deep South (+1) and college-educated white married men (+10). When you look at Democratic voting blocks, union families, unsurprisingly, don’t like NAFTA (-12) but all the others do. African Americans +3, Latinos +7, seculars +4, women with postgraduate degrees +13, and residents of “cosmopolitan states” +2. Given that configuration and the increasing importance of service and public sector unions (who have no reason to fear trade) in the AFL-CIO, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if over the next few years the parties wound up completing the flip on trade issues that began with Clinton’s support of NAFTA and continued with Bush’s steel tarrifs and farm giveaways. The current political dynamic seems to indicate a return to protectionism on the part of the Democrats, but that’s masking an underlying trend in which the Democratic electorate is increasingly pro-trade and the GOP electorate increasingly anti-trade. When you consider that all the big fights in manufactured goods have really all already happened and that the future issues are going to be agriculture and textiles, which are mostly done in Republican states, you see the trend even clearer.

I have no idea where Yglesias is getting his numbers, but let’s assume they’re accurate. [UPDATE: Matt reveals his source] I’m still not sure he’s right. I’ll leave the debate to commenters [You’re slagging off on your own analysis–ed. Sorry, I’m crashing on a few projects and leaving soon to give a talk at Notre Dame.]

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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